Arrow Season 3 Ep 11 (TV Show Review)

CW’s Arrow returned last week and fan expectation was pretty high since the writers had seemingly killed off the hero in the mid-season finale. While the hero’s return was a bit too quick, and perhaps even too soon, the tempo was still right I think and I certainly appreciate that the writers have found a way for the hero to be busy while his allies take charge in his absence. And the new season villain Danny Brickwell, played so brilliantly by actor Vinnie Jones, oozes a lot of rough charm and brutal authority, so I’m excited to see what’s going to happen next.

Last week Danny Brickwell gained himself an army by stealing entire stacks of case evidences from the SCPD and thus freeing a lot of criminals from their court cases. Now this week, we begin to see a hint of his larger plans, and he wants nothing less than full control of the Glades district, absent any police or governmental authority. Team Oliver gets to flex its muscles again, and comes off the worst in a way that was natural and interesting while we learned yet more about Oliver’s time in Hong Kong and what caused Maseo to turn into Sarab. Excellence all around.

The Flash Season 1 Ep 11 (TV Show Review)

CW’s The Flash roared back with its mid-season premiere last week by showing the first good and proper villain team-up between Leonard Snart aka Captain Cold and Mick Rory aka Heat Wave. As part of The Rogues, Captain Cold and Heat Wave certainly have a lot of cachet among Flash’s rogues gallery, and the ending of the episode certainly bore that out with an off-camera debut for Snart’s sister, Lisa, also known as Glider in the comics. Of course, that wasn’t the end-all for the episode because we continued to see how the new status quo from the end of the mid-season finale was continuing to effect all the characters, especially the revelation that Harrison Wells was indeed Reverse-Flash.

In this week’s “The Sound and The Fury” we see the debut of another of Barry’s many villains, Hartley Rathaway aka Pied Piper. In this version of the villain, who still thankfully maintains his roots as a gay character, we see him as one of the many scientists who worked on the STAR Labs particle accelerator, but who is curiously never mentioned by any of the remaining member of Wells’ team. That’s the mystery here, exploring why Rathaway has it in for Wells and why he’s turned into a villain, in addition to some other stuff, almost all of which was pretty excellent.

Agent Carter Season 1 Ep 4 (TV Show Review)

The first three weeks of Marvel’s second live-action television show Agent Carter have been quite spectacular. I fell in love with the show from the get-go and the writers and producers have certainly not disappointed. And the highlight was when the network defender the show’s initial low ratings, showing that the powers-that-be had full faith in the show, especially since it is just an 8-episode mini-series. Hopefully the show gets renewed immediately since I’m loving everything that is going on (up to a point), and the twists that keep coming are just spectacular.

This week’s episode, “Blitzkrieg Button“, we see some more of the moral moral and emotional conundrums that Peggy has had to face of late, especially once she learns that her friend Howard Stark, a close friend she otherwise trusts implicitly, deliberately lied to her and misled her. The psychological impact of it all is pretty scary as a viewer, and to see the show focus more on the character development and less on the action was certainly a nice change of pace too. Though, I have to admit, the character of Dottie Underwood just became way too awesome.